To argue, as David Yerushalmi does, that Hamas’s victory shows “the fallacy of the democracy thesis,” one would have to first establish that the Palestinian Authority is a democracy. It isn’t just yet; as Glenn Reynolds is fond of repeating, democratization is a process, not an event. If, as Yerushalmi speculates, Hamas proceeds to “eliminate any real democratic limits on tyranny by simply eliminating or reducing to a caricature the democratic institutions,” then the democratization process will have failed. But Hamas’s victory shouldn’t scare us off from the goal of completing that process.
Democratic politics are critical to the political evolution that will kill off bin Ladenism, and it isn’t surprising that the evolution of Islamic activism should start off from an ugly place (“Latin American anti-Yanquism on speed,” as Reuel Marc Gerecht puts it). That doesn’t mean that this evolution isn’t possible. Contra Yerushalmi, national character is not a static quality: Anti-Semitism and militarism were no less fundamentally German 100 years ago than radicalism is fundamentally Palestinian today.
ADVERTISEMENT
SPONSORED LINKS
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?